i sharpen my pencils with a box cutter. It takes a little more time at first, but after a few tries it's just as fast. I've found that I can get sharper pencils as opposed to mechanical sharpeners, and the lead tends to break less.

well, having worked in a office supply store before i can tell you there is a lot of difference in brands of pencils. you wouldn't think there would be would you?if you are using a pencil sharpener it may not be sharp enough and it twisting the lead instead of shaving it.

When I was an art student, we were taught that when the lead in your pencil keeps breaking like that it means that the pencil has been dropped (either by you or the supplier...) The lead inside the pencil shatters all the way along and hence, when you sharpen it, it just appears to keep breaking off! It taught us to be very careful with our expensive art pencils... I would suggest that you return it (them?) to your supplier and try to return or exchange them...

I actually had an electronic pencil sharpener that basically got to the point where it was breaking the tip off the pencil it was sharpening and then it was becoming lodged in the hole instead of falling into the waste compartment. This would prevent any new pencils from going all the way in completely and thus not getting sharpened properly. So make sure there's no broken lead jammed in the hole.

Get a mechanical pencil. The text you write will be more even, there is no need to sharpen it, it doesn't shrink and become uncomfortable to hold, and it doesn't have to be more expensive. For example, I bought a ten pack of "BIC MatiC" pencils for 30 SEK.

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Considering that each contains three leads it could be seen as "equal to three normal pencils", giving a price of "1 SEK per pencil". That's the same price as for many cheap wooden pencils.